“How strange,” Lorena remarks.

Without a word Bailey leaps over the porch railing and takes off in a full run through the trees. He heads toward the striped tents as fast as he can, his red scarf trailing out behind him.

Old Ghosts

LONDON, OCTOBER 31, 1902

It is late and the pavement is dark despite the streetlamps dotting the line of grey stone buildings. Isobel stands near the shadowed stairs of the one she called home for almost a year, what now seems like a lifetime ago. She waits outside for Marco to return, a pale blue shawl pulled around her shoulders like a patch of day-bright sky in the night.

Hours pass before Marco appears at the corner. His grip on his briefcase tightens when he sees her.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “You’re supposed to be in the States.”

“I left the circus,” Isobel said. “I walked away. Celia said I could.”

She takes a faded scrap of paper from her pocket, bearing her name, her real name that he coaxed from her years ago and asked her to write in one of his notebooks.

“Of course she did,” Marco says.

“May I come upstairs?” she asks, fidgeting with the edge of her shawl.

“No,” Marco says, glancing up at the windows. A dim, flickering light illuminates the glass. “Please, just say whatever it is you’re here to say.”

Isobel frowns. She looks around the street but it is dark and empty, only a crisp breeze blowing through, rustling the leaves in the gutter.

“I wanted to say that I was sorry,” she says quietly. “For not telling you that I was tempering. I know what happened last year was partly my fault.”

“You should apologize to Celia, not to me.”

“I already have,” Isobel says. “I knew she was in love with someone, but I thought it was Herr Thiessen. I didn’t realize until that night that it was you. But she loved him as well, and she lost him and I was the cause.”

“It was not your fault,” Marco says. “There were a great many factors involved.”

“There have always been a great many factors involved,” Isobel says. “I didn’t mean to get so tangled up in this. I only wanted to be helpful. I wanted to get through … this and go back to the way things were, before.”

“We cannot go backward,” Marco says. “A great deal is not how it used to be.”

“I know,” Isobel says. “I cannot hate her. I have tried. I cannot even dislike her. She let me carry on for years, clearly suspicious of her, but she was always kind to me. And I loved the circus. I felt like I finally had a home, a place I could belong. After a while I didn’t feel like I needed to protect you from her, I felt I should protect everyone else from both of you, and both of you from each other. I started after you came to see me in Paris, when you were so upset about the Wishing Tree, but I knew I had to continue after I read Celia’s cards.”

“When was this?” Marco asks.

“That night in Prague when you were supposed to meet me,” Isobel says. “You never let me read for you, not even a single card before last year. I had not realized that before. I wonder if I would have let this go on so long if I’d had the opportunity. It took ages for me to truly understand what her cards were saying. I could not see what was right in front of me. I wasted so much time. This was always about the two of you, even before you met. I was only a diversion.”

“You were not a diversion,” Marco says.

“Did you ever love me?” Isobel asks.

“No,” Marco admits. “I thought perhaps I could, but … ”

Isobel nods.

“I thought you did,” she says. “I was so certain that you did, even though you never said it. I couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real. I thought this was going to be temporary, even when it kept dragging on and on. But it’s not. It never was. I was the one who was temporary. I used to think that if she were gone, you would come back to me.”

“If she were gone, I would be nothing,” Marco says. “You should think better of yourself than to settle for that.”

They stand in silence on the empty street, the chill of the night air falling between them.

“Good night, Miss Martin,” Marco says, starting up the stairs.

“The most difficult thing to read is time,” Isobel says, and Marco stops, turning back to her. “Maybe because it changes so many things. I have read for countless people on innumerable subjects and the most difficult thing to understand within the cards is always the timing. I knew that, and still it surprised me. How long I was willing to wait for something that was only a possibility. I always thought it was just a matter of time, but I was wrong.”

“I did not expect this to go on as long as—” Marco begins, but Isobel interrupts him.

“It was all a matter of timing,” she says. “My train was late that day. The day I saw you drop your notebook. Had it been on schedule we never would have met. Maybe we were never meant to. It was a possibility, one of thousands, and not inevitable, the way some things are.”

“Isobel, I am sorry,” Marco says. “I am sorry that I involved you in all of this. I am sorry that I did not tell you sooner how I feel for Celia. I do not know what else you want from me that I can give you.”

Isobel nods, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

“I read for someone a week ago,” she says. “He was young, younger than I was when I met you. Tall in the way of someone who is not yet used to being tall. He was genuine and sweet. He even asked me my name. And everything was in his cards. Everything. It was like reading for the circus, and that has only happened to me once before, when I read for Celia.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Marco asks.

“Because I thought he could have saved you. I didn’t know how to feel about that; I still don’t. It was there in his cards along with everything else, as plain as anything I have ever seen. I thought then that this was going to end differently. I was wrong. I seem to be wrong quite frequently. Perhaps it is time for me to find a new occupation.”

Marco stops, his face going pale in the lamplight.

“What are you saying?” he asks.

“I am saying that you had a chance,” Isobel says. “A chance to be with her. A chance for everything to resolve itself in a favorable manner. I almost wanted that for you, truly, in spite of everything. I still want you to be happy. And the possibility was there.” She gives him a small, sad smile as she slides her hand into her pocket. “But the timing isn’t right.”

She removes her hand from her pocket and uncurls her fingers. In her palm sits a pile of sparkling black crystals, silt as fine as ash.

“What is that?” Marco asks as she lifts her palm to her lips.

In response, Isobel blows softly, and the ash flies at Marco in a stinging black cloud.

When the dust clears, Marco’s briefcase sits abandoned on the pavement by her feet. Isobel takes it with her as she leaves.

Aftermath

NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1, 1902

Though the surroundings have changed, the circus looks exactly the same as it did in his own fields, Bailey thinks when he finally reaches the fence, holding a stitch in his side and breathing heavily from running through an area that is more woods than fields.

But something more than that is different. It takes him a moment of trying to catch his breath by the side of the gates, staring at the sign that reads:

Closed Due to Inclement Weather

hanging over the normal sign denoting the hours of operation.

It is the smell, he realizes. It is not the smell of caramel blended perfectly with the woody smoke of a warming fire. Instead it is the heavy scent of something burned and wet, with a sickly sweet undertone.

It makes him nauseous.

There is no sound within the bounds of the curling iron fence. The tents are perfectly still. Only the clock beyond the gates makes any motion, slowly ticking by the afternoon hours.

Bailey discovers quickly that he is not able to slip through the bars of the fence as easily as he did when he was ten. The space is too narrow, no matter how he tries to shift his shoulders. He half expected Poppet to be there waiting for him, but there is not a soul in sight.

The fence is too high to climb, and Bailey is considering simply sitting in front of the gates until sundown when he spots a curving tree branch that does not quite reach the fence but comes close, hanging above the twisting iron spikes at the top.

From there he could jump. If he got the angle right he would land in a path between tents. If he got the angle wrong he’d likely break his leg, but that would be only a minor problem that could be dealt with, and then at least he would be inside the circus.

The tree is easy enough to climb, and the limb closest to the circus wide enough to manage until he gets closer to the fence. But he is unable to balance well and while he attempts a graceful leap, it ends up being something closer to a planned fall. He lands heavily in the path, rolling into the side of the tent and taking a large amount of the white powder on the ground with him.

His legs hurt but seem to be in working order, though his shoulder feels badly bruised and the palms of his hands are a mess of scrapes and dirt and powder. The powder brushes off his hands easily enough, but sticks like paint to his coat and the legs of his new suit. And now he stands alone inside the circus again.

“Truth or dare,” he mutters to himself.

Dry, fragile leaves dance around his feet, drawn in through the fence by the wind. Spots of muted autumn color disrupting the black and white.

Bailey is not certain where to go. He wanders through paths expecting to see Poppet around every corner, but he is met with only stripes and emptiness. Finally, he heads toward the courtyard, toward the bonfire.

As he turns a corner that opens up into the wide space of the bonfire courtyard, he is more surprised by the fact that the fire is not burning than he is to find that there is indeed someone waiting for him.

But the figure standing by the cauldron of curling iron is not Poppet. This woman is too short, her hair too dark. When she turns she has a long silver cigarette holder at her lips, and the smoke curls around her head like snakes.

It takes him a moment to recognize the contortionist, having only ever seen her upon a platform bending herself into impossible shapes.

“You are Bailey, yes?” she says.

“Yes,” Bailey answers, wondering if absolutely everyone in the circus knows who he is.

“You are late,” the contortionist tells him.

“Late for what?” Bailey asks, confused.

“I doubt she will be able to hold on much longer.”

“Who?” Bailey asks, though the thought pops into his head that the contortionist might be referring to the circus itself.

“And of course,” she continues, “had you arrived earlier it might have played out differently. Timing is a sensitive thing.”

“Where’s Poppet?” Bailey asks.

“Miss Penelope is indisposed at the moment.”

“How can she not know that I’m here?” he asks.

“She might very well know you are here, but that does not change the fact that she is, as I have mentioned, indisposed at the moment.”

“Who are you?” Bailey asks. His shoulder is throbbing now and he cannot quite pinpoint when everything stopped making sense.

“You may call me Tsukiko,” the contortionist says. She takes a long drag on her cigarette.

Beyond her, the monstrous bowl of wrought-iron curls sits hollow and still. The ground around it, usually painted in a spiral pattern of black and white, is now nothing but darkness, as though it has been swallowed up by empty space.

“I thought the fire never went out,” Bailey says, walking closer to it.

“It never has before,” Tsukiko says.

Reaching the edge of the still-hot iron curls, Bailey stands on his toes to peer inside. It is almost filled with rainwater, the dark surface rippling in the breeze. The ground beneath his feet is black and muddy, and when he steps back he accidentally kicks a black bowler hat.

“What happened?” Bailey asks.

“That is somewhat difficult to explain,” Tsukiko answers. “It is a long and complicated story.”

“And you’re not going to tell it to me, are you?”

She tilts her head a bit, and Bailey can see the hint of a smile playing around her lips.

“No, I am not,” she says.

“Great,” Bailey mutters under his breath.

“I see you have taken up the banner,” Tsukiko says, pointing her cigarette at his red scarf. Bailey is unsure how to respond to this, but she continues without waiting for an answer. “I suppose you could call it an explosion.”

“The bonfire exploded? How?”

“Remember when I said it was difficult to explain? That has not changed.”

“Why didn’t the tents burn?” Bailey asks, looking around at the seemingly never-ending stripes. Some of the closer tents are splattered with mud, but none are burned despite the charred ground surrounding them.

“That was Miss Bowen’s doing,” Tsukiko says. “I suspect without that precaution there would have been more extensive damage.”

“Who is Miss Bowen?” Bailey asks.

“You ask a lot of questions,” Tsukiko responds.

“You don’t answer very many of them,” Bailey retaliates.

The smile appears in full then, curling up in a manner Bailey finds almost disturbingly friendly.

“I am only an emissary,” Tsukiko says. “I am here to act as convoy to escort you to a meeting, for a discussion of such matters, I suppose, because at the moment I am the only living person who has any idea of what has transpired, and why you are here. Your questions are better saved for someone else.”